Betty is from the Main Line.
We do *not *Zou Bisou Bisou on the Main Line.
(Well, maybe in *Overbrook *. . . .)
This was the first episode I’ve ever seen of Mad Men, so I have no idea who anyone is, or what’s going on - I enjoyed the episode a lot, took me back to the 60s, what with the decor, the clothes and someone having a purse (handbag) just like the one my mother had when I was a child!
I’ve heard/read a lot of complaints about the amount of smoking and drinking that goes on in the show - I didn’t think they drank or smoke enough! That party would have been like a fog bank!
I was surprised to see Conor (from Angel) in there, looking and sounding a lot like Wesley Crusher (I thought!)
And hey, Yo-saf-bridge! Her hair’s the same colour as mine! 
I’m going to keep watching and see if I can rent the first four seasons on DVD!
It’s really an episodic show. You deserve to see it in order.
I keep forgetting it’s the same guy. Vincent Kartheiser really has become an impressive actor.
NM
Here is where I thin kthis is going (I’ll put it in a spoiler, even though it is pure speculation):
SCDP won’t survive, and I think the harbinger of it will be Pete leaving the company to go somewhere else. It is already struggling, Don is losing his focus, Roger is an anachronism, and Pete brings in all the accounts but gets not enough respect. he also is not to fond of the playboy atmosphere in the office. I also see Peggy getting frustrated, especially with Don, whom she greatly respects but sees he is riding on his laurels and is no longer the mentor she needs. She is the work horse of the creative department and yet I guess she will see how little opportunity there is for her to advance, so she may be gone to. Or at least the threat of leaving will come up.
Weren’t Cosgrove and Pete kind of running through a plan to bail in general?
Glad you enjoyed it! The smoking was laid on thick early in the show–because people really did smoke all the time. But the actors smoke rather unpleasant herbal things & maybe they are letting them smoke a bit less. The drinking that everybody noticed was mostly in the office–drinking at a party isn’t that weird. (And, of course, they were smoking something else at the party, too!) Roger is the only one drinking all the time, now.
The previous seasons are streaming on Netflix. Some will say you must see all the old ones first, but I’d advise you to watch the new stuff & catch up with the rest as you can. Either after this season or during–if you’re smart!
I thought that was a polite brush-off to all of the applicants. “We’ll review your resumes and if you have the qualifications we need, we’ll call you in for an interview.” i.e., we won’t be calling any of you, and none of you will know that. They had already established that they can’t afford to hire anyone, even a secretary.
I wondered about that. In the scene immediately prior, one of them says something like “or should we just fire that secretary out there?”…moments later she walks in with the ‘gift’ from Y&R. So I’m getting the feeling they decided to replace her with one of the applicants, in order to save face for the firm.
Thinking about it, I imagine that they could probably save money by replacing a white secretary with a black one, right?
Plus that actress’s delivery (of her line) STUNK. I wouldn’t miss her.
I’ve been convinced that whatever Sally ends up doing in her misspent youth, she ends up as Peter Florrick’s mother on The Good Wife:
And wasn’t that immediately followed up with someone saying something akin to “You can’t put a black girl out front.”
I believe the quote was more like “We can’t have one of * them * out front.”
I’m going to tread carefully here and hope not to tick anyone off, but did anyone think all the “Negroes” out in the waiting room could have used makeovers? They looked rather tired, plain, and drabbed down, like they’d all been riding on a bus for three days. Maybe it was their hair, which looked ironed and pomaded into place.
Yes, that [del]was[/del] is SOP when one want’s to give a job applicant the brush off. And normally that’s exactly what they’d do, but this is different. They backed themselves into a corner with that ad, and are clearly afraid of getting bad PR like Y&R. They even mentione the possiblilty of one of the applicants being a reporter. They’re going to have to hire one of them.
If you think about it hiring a black receptionist is fridge brilliance. She’d have no power or influence over anything & spend most of her day seperated from all the other workers, yet would be the first person anyone sees going into the agency which is good for PR. I don’t see any client raising a fuss over that, even in 1966. A Black *copywriter *would need to be kept out of sight of many clients though.
Clearly you don’t remember the 60 Minutes investigation in the 1980s about how Manhattan firms wouldn’t hire anyone but a pretty young white woman as a receptionist. In 1966, it wouldn’t have beeen thought good PR; it would have been thought bizarre.
I’ll have to go back to get a look, but I didn’t notice anything “off” about their appearance. It was summer & they had, in fact, been riding buses & subways–and walking–to get to the interview. I’m sure they wore their dullest, most respectable clothes–to make a good impression on the uptight white guys hiring. This was before Afros & Black Is Beautiful; their hair styling did, indeed, involve ironing (or toxic chemicals) & pomading into place…
Even now, many American employers don’t accept a black woman in an office/professional position with a “natural” hair style. In the Washington area, I’ve rarely seen a black woman in a professional position who didn’t have chemically straightened hair or a wig.
Well, that’s what I was getting at, the styles of clothes, makeup, and hair have changed SO much. When you look at pictures of the early black ‘girl groups’, or bits of film from the time, of black people dancing at American Bandstand-type dances, they look really dated. (Could say the same for the whites, too. Look at, say, Lesley Gore with her little peter pan collar and flipped up hair - and Katy Perry, lol.)